The Sundered Sea - A 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign

Session 02 - Black Feathers and Black Omens

17

JUN/17

The party finds themselves huddled around the kenku watchman’s corpse, just outside the light of his campfire. The sun had dropped below the canopy of the forest about an hour ago, and a steady ran began to fall as darkness enclosed the forest ruins.

Ahead – about 70 feet in the distance – another campfire burned, and long humanoid shadows and chittering whispers surrounding it.

Suddenly, a voice pierces the calm – ringing inside the heads of the party, powerful and inescapable. In the distance, and through the darkness, Finn spies a tiny bead of brilliant, green light – ebbing like a star while the voice rings.

Maybe. Maybe it’s called you, too. The manling all clad in green came, like the crowlings have come, and tend to mother – yes. Now more manlings – and a feytouched lass, yes – holding daddy’s knife like a dolly. Sweet little children, all’ve come to mother. But what manner of manlings are you, what manner… Come for the girl – come for the trinkets? Come for blood? We will see. Maybe. We will see.

The voice goes quiet.

The party stalks north, outside the light of the campfires. Finn approaches and frees a chained wolf, likely an earlier victim of the pit trap dug into the ground earlier down the path. The wolf is peaceful and grateful, running off into the night.

The ruined temple where Finn perceived the green light lied just ahead, over a small creek. As Kit stepped across a small wooden bridge, the whoosh of a quarrel flew just in front of her head. A violent skirmish ensued, Rask, Finn, and Kit rushing forward to bludgeon a kenku watchman crouching behind a small rock wall.

Entering the ruined temple, the find a resplendent onyx statue of a raven, small piles of offerings laid at its feet. The party has , at this point, accumulated a small stockpile of healing tonics, consisting of the familiar “Gutterbleed” commonly available from seedy apothecaries around the Waning Isle. Cheap to make and purchase, the swill is murky and horribly bitter – but an effective tonic nonetheless.

The kenku appear to have been “offering” choice pieces of loot from their raids on the nearby roads. Kit retrieves a fist-sized sapphire ebbing with a magical aura, undoubtedly a cypher of some kind.

After another battle with the last remaining kenku bandits, the party locates Alainne Barrowdown – locked inside a small, decrepid cell within the ruins of a nearby storeroom.